Jim Laurent's Weblog

Those who have seen me speak to customers, know that I have a "mantra" when asked to compare Solaris to various Linux distributions.  It goes like this:

• Solaris does more than Red Hat
• Solaris costs less than Red Hat
• Solaris is open source like Red Hat
• Solaris runs on more Intel, AMD and Sparc platforms than Red Hat. 

As a result, one FAQ I get is, "How much less does Solaris 10 cost?"  According to our Sun site and the Red Hat site list price comparisons for support and licenses are:
 

Hmmmm....  So much for the idea that "Linux is cheap or free." 

Other important notes about Solaris 10:

• It supports (in addition to our own AMD based workstations, servers and blades) those by Dell, HP, IBM and more.
• It also runs on our scalable (up to 144 processors and 2 TB of RAM) Sparc servers and workstations
  
• It is FREE to download and use in production without paying the license or service support contract. (Sparc or X86)
  
• With each update of Solaris 10 you can download the new update (which include rolled up patches) for free as well
• Solaris 10 includes a binary compatibility guarantee as well as indemnification
  

Red Hat touts a number of new features in RHEL 5 that Solaris has had for years including:

• Multi-level security which was first built into SunOS 4 back in the early 90s and is now included in Solaris 10 in the form of Trusted Extensions.
  
• Real-time processing which was first featured in Solaris 8 over 7 years ago
• Virtualization which was introduced in Solaris 10 in 2005
  
• Open source development model which Solaris introduced 2 years ago
• Integrated LDAP directory which Solaris 8 included in the year 2000
• Auditing features which have been built into Solaris since version 2.3
• SystemTap profiler which is a poor substitute for Solaris 10 advanced, award winning Dynamic Tracing Facility
  

Other advanced, open source features in Solaris 10 include:

• ZFS, an advanced, easy to manage scalable file system
• Service management facility to simpify operation and security
• Secure by default to control network services out of the box
• Predictive self-healing to provide the highest RAS available.
• A large collection of third party applications
  

In short Solaris is a better "Linux than Linux"

Why should you care?

If you are interested in a data center quality operating system used for years by the most demanding customers at a low price, Solaris should be your first choice.

If you have more questions about Sun's strategy for Solaris and are a US Federal Government customer, contact Sun Federal at 703 204 4100 in McLean VA.